The present invention relates to a method for monitoring a monitored region recorded by a camera, in particular a smart camera.
“Smart cameras” refer to optical systems which not only capture images but are also able to autonomously process and/or interpret said images. In addition to providing an image capturing circuit, a smart camera can, for example, as an intelligent and autonomous optical system, filter out and process application-specific items of information from captured images and make decisions as a result of this.
Prior knowledge about a scene geometry of a region to be monitored can be used for a video content analysis in order to improve performance with regard to object detection, object tracking and classification or to check the plausibility of objects.
Certain sub-regions of the monitored region recorded by the camera can then be masked as being irrelevant, i.e excluded for the automatic image processing.
A method for video monitoring is known, for example, from the German patent specification DE 10 2007 041 893 A1, in which different regions in which disturbing objects appear or can appear are only analyzed or, respectively, monitored to a limited extent.
Monitoring cameras have, however, in recent times been used for more complex scenes, such as, e.g., super markets in which the required performance for the image processing increases. A simple masking of regions not be monitored is moreover often not possible.
It is therefore desirable to specify an option for determining regions of a monitored region in such a way, that the required video content analysis is kept to a minimum, especially contingent on particular situations.